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The study finds that it’s 40 percent more likely that a bot express support for the right-wing party Sweden Democrats compared to genuine Twitter accounts.

Most of the bot accounts are spreading nationalist and anti-immigration messages and the number of automated Twitter accounts focusing on the Sweden election have more than doubled since spring.

There are now over 1,200 account compared to 500 earlier this year.

The accounts are estimated to make up six percent of all accounts that discuss politics related to the Swedish election and are responsible for 12 percent of the Swedish political content on Twitter.

Sweden election 2018: There has been an upsurge in automated Twitter accounts ahead of the election (Image: GETTY)

Hopefully, this study will contribute to a greater awareness of possible effects of the bots, so more citizens make their decisions without being affected by them

Johan Fernquist

Johan Fernquist, a research at FOI said: ”Hopefully, this study will contribute to a greater awareness of possible effects of the bots, so more citizens make their decisions without being affected by them.”

According to the researcher, the Twitter bots discussing politics almost doubled from July to August.

FOI said on Tuesday that it has not investigated who is behind the Twitter bots and therefore won’t be commenting on if foreign governments are involved.

The Swedish authorities started raising concerns of foreign interference amid the election last year.

For Sweden, support for right-wing parties has not been common until recent years, but the combined polls for August, conducted by val.digital shows Sweden Democrats with a percentage of 20.2.

The result is an increase of almost 50 percent since the 2014 election when the eurosceptic party only received 12.9 percent of the votes.

Compared to the election results in 2014 the Left Party, the Christian Democrats, the Centre Party, and the Sweden Democrats are performing considerably better, while the Social Democrats, the Green Party, the Moderate Party and the Liberals are losing voters.

The rise of hardline Sweden Democrats can be related back to immigration issues before the 2010 election.

The party gained popularity for their anti-immigration stance and pushed back against the arrival of 163,000 asylum-seekers to Sweden in 2015.

Sweden has a population of 10million and now has the highest per-capita rate of refugees in Europe.